The 2021 NZ Podcast Awards Presented by rova has announced its inaugural winners. An esteemed pool of local and international judges have trawled through submissions from 170+ Kiwi podcasts, which came from 400+ nominations.
The rova Listeners’ Choice Award, won by indie podcast The Shit Show, received more than 17,000 votes in total from podcast fans across the country.
Richard North, Co-Founder of the NZ Podcast Awards, says: “We’ve been so impressed by the breadth and quality of the Kiwi podcasting scene. Our judges have had a really tough job choosing winners for each of the categories and it was an incredibly close call due to the high standard of entrants. The aim of the awards was to shine a light on the industry and reward all the hard work that podcasters put in. We’ve taken a lot of learnings from this first year and next year promises to be even bigger and better.”
“Judging for each category took into account a combination of judges’ scores (including points for entertainment value, audio quality, and more) as well as listenership and fan votes. In many categories, there was very little between the top five or six podcasts, which is a strong indicator of the high quality of podcasts being produced here in Aotearoa.”
The Shit Show also took out Gold in the Acast Best Independent Podcast Award, winning a RØDE prize pack.
RNZ took out the Best Publisher Award, edging out Stuff and Rova for the Gold. RNZ’s hugely popular Black Sheep won Gold in both the True Crime and Culture & Arts categories.
iHeart (NZME) fared well in the radio crossover categories, winning multiple awards, including Best Comedy & Entertainment, Best News & Politics and Best Radio Podcast.
Mediworks/rova dominated the Maori and Pasifika Podcast or Host award, winning both gold and silver, whilst Stuff are represented by several excellent podcasts including One Hot Minute, Collapse and He’ll be Right. The Spinoff saw success with The Real Pod (Silver) and Business is Boring (Gold).
While the large radio networks gained plenty of recognition, independent podcasts delivered the majority of awards, with The Girls Uninterrupted, Get Flushed and The Provise Project all proving popular with judges and fan voters.
Well-known comedian Urzila Carlson also scored Gold in the Best New Podcast category, presented by Triton Digital, for That’s Enough Already! Judges said: “There are some fantastic guests on this podcast, but the star of the show is 100% Urzila. Her laugh is infectious and her style is relatable to both guests and listeners.”
